UPDATE: School Calendar Changes Announced

Changes Made to Add Instruction Time

Article Date: Feb 08, 2017

UPDATE: February 8, 2017

Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Shay Mikalson announced changes to the 2016-17 school year calendar today.“After meeting with the state Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction, hearing from local families and meeting with employee group leaders, we have developed a revised school calendar that recovers valuable student instructional time without further extending the end of the school year,” he said. “With the extension of several school days in March, which were originally slated as School Improvement Wednesdays (SIW), and the elimination of some traditional conference time in exchange for more flexible communication with parents this spring, we are able to recover several days of lost classroom time for students.”

Mikalson said that these additions, coupled with the four days that had previously been added to the end of the school year, will allow students to recoup at least six lost instructional days.

The new calendar changes include the following:

MARCHWednesday, March 8 Full school day, instead of SIW schedule

Wednesday, March 15 Full school day, instead of SIW schedule

Wednesday, March 22Full school day, instead of SIW schedule

APRILWednesday, April 5 SIW schedule resumes, no 11:45 a.m. release for elementary students

Thursday, April 13 Full school day, previously a conference day for middle and elementary students

Friday, April 14Full school day for middle and high school students No school for elementary schools, Three Rivers School and Westside Village students

JUNEFriday, June 16 Full school day

Monday, June 19Full school day

Tuesday, June 20 Full school day

Wednesday, June 21 Full school day

Thursday, June 22 Students released on SIW schedule

“The addition of extended days prior to spring break, rather than waiting until the end of the year, will give our students additional time with their teachers and better prepare those taking Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and state tests in the spring,” said Mikalson.

Mikalson added that eliminating or reducing parent-teacher conference time in lieu of added school days should not preclude open dialogue between families and their students’ teachers. “Teachers will be communicating with parents and guardians about student progress around mid-April,” he said. “As always, we encourage families to contact teachers at any time to check their student progress; communication is not limited to just conference time.”

The 2016-17 school calendar changes come after extreme accumulations of snow in the Bend, La Pine and Sunriver areas prompted district officials to close schools for several days in January to allow for significant snow removal from school roofs and building assessments by structural engineers.

Mikalson said that he hopes this will be the last calendar change for the 2016-17 school year, but that unforeseen events could result in additional changes. That said, he assures families that the school year will not extend past June 22 and that spring break will not be shortened.

From Jan. 11, 2017

In an effort to balance student school days for the 2016-17 school year, and to ensure that our students have the access to learning that they deserve, Bend-La Pine Schools is making the following changes to the remainder of the 2016-17 school year.

DATE CHANGES:Students WILL attend school on February 3. There will be NO SCHOOL on Friday, February 10.

The semester will be extended by one week. This is a calendar change to allow for the recovery of five instructional days to first semester. Please note that the ‘no-school’ day will now occur on Friday, February 10, instead of Friday, February 3. This will allow teachers time to complete grading on February 10, as the end of the first semester has been moved back to February 9. (This change also applies to La Pine Middle and La Pine High School, which are on trimesters.)

DATE CHANGES: Students WILL attend school on Monday, June 19; Tuesday, June 20; Wednesday, June 21; and Thursday, June 22.

The end of the school year will be extended by four days.

Students will have a full school day on Friday, June 16. Students will be released on the School Improvement Wednesday schedule on Thursday, June 22.

Graduation dates will not change.

Bend-La Pine Schools’ students are fortunate to receive exceptional learning opportunities every day in our schools. We believe that it is important that we make up for lost instruction time by adding school days back to our calendar.

To date, a record five school days have been canceled district-wide this school year due to hazardous weather – something we believe has never happened in the 130-year history of our district. To put this in perspective, in the 20 years between 1989 and 2009 we only had five district wide school closures. The same was true between 2011 and 2015, just five closures. This year has been quite an anomaly.

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Bend-La Pine Schools does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, creed, religion, national origin, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, veteran or military status, or the use of a service animal by a person with a disability, and provides equal access to all designated youth groups. For questions or complaints, please contact your school's principal, the district's Title IX Coordinator at 541-355-1100, or ODE's Equity and Civil Rights Office. Discrimination Complaint/Grievance Procedure